HEALTH BENEFITS FROM GRAMPIANS BROADBAND ROLLOUT

19 May 2004
64/04

More than 200,000 Victorians will benefit from better delivery of health care services with the rollout of broadband to 40 rural and remote towns in the Grampians.

In Ballarat today, I was pleased to announce the engagement of a carrier and the start of the rollout of the Grampians Rural Health Alliance Network (GRHANet) project, which has received $8 million through the Australian Government's $50 million National Communications Fund.

GRHANet has reached agreement with Telstra Country Wide to rollout the broadband services and Dimension Data Australia has also been contracted to provide network management services.

It is one of eight Australian Government National Communications Fund projects addressing service and infrastructure gaps in rural and regional Australia, in all States and the Northern Territory.

The GRHANet project involves installing major broadband capability at local hospitals and customer connections to an additional 80 non-hospital sites, including general practitioners' offices, community health centres, pharmacies, Home and Community Care (HACC) service providers in local government agencies and community enterprise and learning centres.

This will provide a telecommunications network able to integrate voice, video and data communication services for all health care and community service providers in the region.

The network design provides cheap connectivity to Melbourne and a foundation that can be easily built upon to add more sites and bandwidth capacity.

The network will allow rural healthcare agencies to provide new services such as telecounselling, where rural youth and families can receive professional counselling via the broadband connection.

Other benefits include the fast retrieval of electronic health records and teleradiology, where medical images can be sent and interpreted quickly across long distances. The availability of Voice Over IP services will also deliver significant savings for the health sector.

The GRHAnet project will provide additional benefits to rural communities by establishing broadband capacity throughout the region, which can be used by non-healthcare users such as small businesses and local governments.

And it reflects the Australian Government's strong and ongoing commitment to ensure that rural and regional communities share in the benefits of new technology.


Media Contact: Carina Tan-Van Baren (02) 6277 7480 or 0439 425 373